I’m packing boxes in a race against time for the house move on Thursday. Why oh why did the empire choose this of all weeks to strike? I listen to podcasts as I work, read stuff when I can. In the evening and early morning I watch YouTube videos.
In a BTL exchange yesterday (edited for brevity – full exchange here) one MFB wrote, apropos my call to consult different sources and triangulate:
The trouble with calling for “triangulation” of sources is that there are no pro-genocide, pro-aggression, pro-imperialism and pro-Zionist sources which contain even enough information to be worth debunking …
… Sorry, but there is nothing to triangulate. The propaganda is so crude, so devoid of any convincing content or even any entertaining whoppers, that I’m falling back on PressTV and (pinch of salt here) al-Jazeera.
I replied with a selfie quote used many times:
On many matters ‘quality’ media serve us tolerably well but this truth enables a greater lie. They need to show good faith even when doing so may embarrass those in high office. (Not only does their long term capacity to influence opinion and manufacture consent depend on it. So too, on pain of losing market share, do their business models.) But the trust so gained helps them mislead us, more by omission than commission, on matters critical – above all the vilifying of states and leaders in the way of empire designs – to the power they ultimately serve.
I agree: those media can’t be trusted on this criminal war … I spend hours each day tuning into alternatives and, while I deem all honest, it’s vital to understand and allow for their worldviews – ditto any tendency to wishful thinking or the opposite – and cross check against one another and emerging realities. Whose analyses generated accurate predictions? And where predictions are proved wrong – a distinct probability in these turbulent times – do they own their mistakes? This is what I mean by triangulation.
(Al-jazeera, btw, is a good example. It does well on many things and, because I can allow for its Qatar ownership – which made it useless on Syria. and will contaminate its coverage of this latest in the same chain of wars of empire subjugation – it’s still one I consult. Didn’t LBJ say a snake is only dangerous when you don’t know it’s there?)
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The post referenced above, with its plea for triangulating diverse sources, I wrote on Sunday and used the header, Trump’s Operation Epstein Epic Fury. The next day, Moon of Alabama posted this:
Since the mid 1980s the Zionists have tried to push the U.S. into war with Iran. All the time the U.S. did not submit to their pressure for good reasons. To suggest that this pressure is now at the root of the conflict is too perfunctory. As are suggestions that the current Russiagate scandal, aka the Epstein files, has anything to do with it.
The empire is not a joke. It acts for strategic reasons.
It does, and many of my posts – such as my five part series on the now answered question, Is it to be war on Iran? and my four parter, US Neocons & Israel’s far Right – argue that. Behind that circus by which US corporate oligarchies jostle for position in a ‘democracy’ for sale to the highest bidder, the continuity of foreign policy from Obama to Trump 2 is there for all to see: though few look.
That said, grand strategy and conspiracy are not mutually exclusive. Trump has taken an extraordinary gamble, while Netanyahu has visited Washington seven times in fourteen months. We know Epstein, the arch Zionist, ran a honey trap operation – which corporate media ignore while titillating us with the wrongdoings of the rich and royal – and that Trump “likes them young”. I don’t say Israeli kompromat is root cause of US-Israeli virulent hatred of Iran; just that it provides a plausible catalyst for the Friday strikes. Against his instincts, and pledges to the MAGA of an end to the forever wars, Trump gambled on a shock and awe attack and decapitation strike, one he could brag about as one more quick win, seemingly on the premise that Iranians would rise up and overthrow a government this popinjay had been told they detest. Instead, hundreds of thousands took to the streets to register their fury at the martyrdom of one of the most revered figures in Shi culture.
(That doesn’t guarantee that it won’t happen. The US-Israeli sorties are targeting police stations and other civic infrastructure with clear intent to enable the chaos through which regime change by ‘colour revolution’, or failing that Iran’s balkanisation, may emerge.)
But other than folly and desire to have another easy scalp, did Trump have other incentives? I don’t see how we can validly rule that out.
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A friend emailed that America will likely get its way and restore the US puppet, Reza Pahlavi. I said I couldn’t rule that out but deemed it unlikely. So far Iran is inflicting real damage, and time is on its side. China and Russia are helping behind the scenes and – I said – will intervene more overtly if the alternative is Iran falling to the empire. Half of China’s oil imports pass through the choke point of the Hormuz Strait at Bandar Abbas, while Iran is vital to New Silk Road, which would confer immunity to US naval blockade at other choke points like Malacca. Vital too to north-south routes linking Russia to Persian Gulf and West Asia.
More generally, I posited, Washington has shown its hand more overtly than ever before. It intends to maintain planetary hegemony at all costs. I didn’t see China or Russia having the luxury of sitting back and allowing this. For both it’s almost as existential a fight as it is for Iran.
But was I myself guilty of wishful thinking in reply to my friend? Folk aphorisms – “where there’s a will there’s a way” – aside, in matters of international power, hard logistical realities win the day. Posting two hours ago, Brian Berletic argues this very point.
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Sorry I misunderstood you, O Scribe, and understand your feelings about the Big Move (I’m clearing out my office at the moment, retiring at the end of the month), and thanks for your careful correction.
Now, however, the trouble with relying on “amateur” commenters is that one usually doesn’t exactly know how well-informed they are or how biassed they are — the same problem you correctly identified with al-Jazeera, but squared. So, was that flight of F-15s shot down by the Iranians, or by the Kuwaitis? Depends who you listen to, and none of those you listen to can remotely be trusted to know what they are talking about. How bad is the damage at US bases? In Iran? How much capacity has Iran to continue the struggle? Does Iran have any capacity to escalate the struggle? Not only is all of that stuff ignored by the “sensible” media because it interferes with their plugging hasbara and regime change, but there’s really not enough hard information anywhere to tell anybody, so all commentary is up for grabs.
We know that the NATO governments are a bunch of lying scoundrels and that’s also true of the Gulf tyrannies, but Iran also tells lies (as do all countries engaged in a struggle for survival) and how do we tell the lies from the truth there? I want Iran to survive and I don’t believe that the plans to Balkanise Iran or install a Shah can ever succeed no matter how much money the Zionists spend on trying. But they might be able to put themselves in a position to try, much as eventually happened in Iraq and Libya.
On a slightly more hopeful note, don’t you think that this war strongly suggests that US and Zionist espionage services, however much capacity they have to make mischief, have essentially dropped out of the “intelligence” business? Because just about everything the US and the Zionists has done seems to have been calamitous for their long-term goals. Not only murdering spiritual leaders, but destroying schools and hospitals (even our local paper had a photo of the ruins of the Mahatma Gandhi Hospital, which must have gone down very poorly with South African Hindus) just doesn’t strike me as something which any sane intelligence agency would assist in. I think the “intelligence” agencies have been captured by sycophants and deranged ideologues — as one would expect, and as long ago happened to political and economic academia.
On the subject of ‘intelligence’, Tucker Carlson*…….
https://old.bitchute.com/video/nrtCXp00UNZw/
……reports that the Saudi’s and Qatar captured Mossad agents attempting to detonate bombs.
And goes on to suggest that part of the Zionist Greater Judea objective is to remove the USA from the region.
*Bitchute is blocked in the UK but can be accessed via TOR.
Some pertinent questions based on events may also be useful to consider:
– Why have US aircraft relocated to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus? Is it because the USA have, after only two days, relocated from burning and destroyed base facilities in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain?
Just asking.
– How will any US carrier groups re-stock their missile inventory with the Fifth Fleet HQ and post in flames with naval ships trapped in the Gulf as sitting targets?
Just asking.
– On the subject of carrier groups: Why are the UK media today going apeshit at Starmer over Trump’s dressing down over the use of Diego Garcia. Why the urgency?
Is it because Diego Garcia is needed for the Lincoln carrier group to affect repairs for some reason?
Just asking.
Thanks MFB. Lot of good stuff here and me too frazzled to give it justice. Two quickies. One, amateur does not mean inferior. Two, in such fast moving times the value of any alternative voice will reveal itself. A few of the sources I rate, more or less guardedly, are Alastair Crooke, Mohammad Marandi, John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Brian Berletic and Michael Hudson (with that last I include the other two members of that political economic triumvirate, Richard Wolff and Radhika Desai). There are many others I take seriously, and a few who’ve fallen by the wayside not because dishonest but because over excitable and/or too prone to wishful thinking.
“Washington has shown its hand more overtly than ever before. It intends to maintain planetary hegemony at all costs”
Apparently this is a ‘Holy War”:
“MRFF INUNDATED WITH COMPLAINTS OF
GLEEFUL COMMANDERS TELLING TROOPS
IRAN WAR IS “PART OF GOD’S DIVINE PLAN”
TO USHER IN THE RETURN OF JESUS CHRIST
“This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be “afraid” as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now. He urged us to tell our troops that this was “all part of God’s divine plan” and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”
— MRFF active duty NCO client, writing on behalf of themself and 15 other unit members
MRFF has received over 200 calls from more than 50 military installations across all the services since Saturday reporting similar disturbing pronouncements from their Christian zealot commanders.”
https://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/2026/03/mrff-inundated-with-complaints-of-gleeful-commanders-telling-troops-iran-war-is-part-of-gods-divine-plan-to-usher-in-the-return-of-jesus-christ/
https://substack.com/home/post/p-189709984
https://asiatimes.com/2026/03/us-troops-were-told-iran-war-is-for-armageddon-return-of-jesus/
“A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.
From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).
The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, the MRFF told me Monday night.
The MRFF is keeping the complainants anonymous to prevent retribution by the Defense Department. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to my request for comment.”
It’s obvious. The US / Israeli attack was planned to coincide with Steel City House moving location. All part of controlling the narrative and silencing criticism
That’s what I think Bryan, but I’m sure folks will call me one of them there conspiracy theorist, and hubristic with it.